


Longing For You

by amooniesong



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Five Stages of Grief, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt No Comfort, Language of Flowers, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:29:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29930700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amooniesong/pseuds/amooniesong
Summary: Dream had never expected himself to fall like this.He’d never expected to fall in love with a man across the ocean. He never expected to fall in love with a five-foot-eight brunet from London, who smiled a little too wide whenever he spoke and who loved his animals a little too dearly. He never expected to fall in love with a man who could entertain a crowd of thousands while simultaneously knowing how to code incredibly complicated plugins.Yet even after all these things that he never expected happened, he still didn’t expect the first flower.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 79





	Longing For You

Dream had never expected himself to fall like this.

He’d never expected to fall in love with a man across the ocean. He never expected to fall in love with a five-foot-eight brunet from London, who smiled a little too wide whenever he spoke and who loved his animals a little too dearly. He never expected to fall in love with a man who could entertain a crowd of thousands while simultaneously knowing how to code incredibly complicated plugins.

Yet even after all these things that he never expected happened, he still didn’t expect the first flower.

He muted himself without needing to explain to George why he was doing so - he’d only be gone for a second and then he’d be back, talking and laughing with his friends once the tickle in his throat was gone. Except after he cleared his throat a little he found that the irritation didn’t go away, but got worse. He coughed again, a little harder this time, and still the sensation didn’t go away. Instead of coughing a third time he reached for a bottle of water - wanting to laugh as he remembered the hashtag his friends had trended the last time he’d reached for water on stream - and unscrewed the lid. He gulped it down quickly, swallowing the liquid in the hopes that it would soothe him.

It didn’t. Instead he found his throat tightening up and air starting to be harder to find. 

Dream had to admit he was terrified, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t. Even though it was just him, alone in his bedroom, he tried to act as calmly as he could. He put the cap back on the bottle, he placed it on his desk and reached to hold onto the edge (his fingers were shaking, and so he gripped the surface until his knuckles were white).

He wasn’t sure how much time passed as he began to cough again, trying to do so as strategically as he could. Rather than letting desperation kick in and coughing quickly with shallow breaths he made sure that each cough was as strong as he could make it.

When he dislodged the petal after the third hack he watched with watery eyes as it slowly dropped onto the keyboard before him. It was bloody and slimy with mucus, but as his shaky fingers moved away from the desk to pick it up he didn’t think twice about it. His mind was focused on one thing, and one thing only. 

_ He was in trouble.  _

Dream had entirely forgotten about the stream, waiting until he felt strong enough to get to his feet and run to the bathroom. There was only one way he knew how to deal with this - by pushing aside all emotion and looking at it logically. He knew he could be overcome with the realisation of what was happening to him another time, and in all likelihood he knew he would be, but right now he needed to figure out a few things.

After running the petal under the water that flowed from the faucet, rinsing off the disgusting mixture of bodily fluids, he could see the true colour of the flower. It was white in the centre and faded to pink toward the tips. By no means was Dream an expert in botany, but he could use Google: he was perfectly capable of typing in a vague description until he found a flower that resembled the petal that had come from his lungs. It was, he deduced, a camellia. And after another short while searching online he managed to find a meaning.

_ Longing for you.  _

He grabbed a tissue and scrunched the petal up inside, before throwing it in the small trash can in his room. For now it would be easy to pretend it didn’t exist. He hadn’t had to cough again! He was  _ fine!  _ And people that were fine didn’t think about the implications, didn’t think about what it meant in the long run.

The logical part of Dream was gone now that he had answered to his initial questions, and now left with emotion controlling his decisions denial was the first thing he came to.

Before pulling his headphones back over his ears he took a sip of water, then a deep breath, and then finally shifted in his seat. Eventually he gained the courage to unmute his mic and things were  _ normal.  _

“Dream’s back!” George said, in the way that only he could, and Dream’s stomach twisted.

“Dreamy-poo! We missed you!” Sapnap cooed in a sing-song voice.

“What were you doing?”

“Taking a massive shit, I bet.” Sapnap snickered, and Dream started to laugh. 

Even  _ if  _ he was letting his emotions rule him, even  _ if  _ he was denying what was happening in his lungs at that very moment, he still didn’t laugh as hard. Subconsciously, he knew that his classic wheeze would only irritate the flowers growing inside him more and risk another coughing fit, one he couldn’t get out of so easily.

But aside from that one, quiet thought in the back of his mind, things were normal. And things could  _ continue  _ to be normal. Dream still sat on call with George and Sapnap most days, he still spent the nights (the ones where he  _ didn’t  _ fall asleep with his friends) alone in his bed, thinking about the British man who’d wrapped his hands around his heart (and taken root in his chest). 

Denial didn’t last all that long though. A week at most. He could deny what was happening all he wanted, but denying the flowers growing in his lungs didn’t stop the coughing fits. It didn’t stop him having to mute on calls, having to push back filming videos because his throat was raw and sore and his voice was gone, and it didn’t stop the ever increasing pile of scrunched up tissues on the floor of his bedroom. 

What he felt next, every time he found himself leaning over his sink and watching as petals thick with blood and saliva dripped down from his bottom lip onto the porcelain below, was a raging hot anger. He didn’t know where to direct it - at George, for making him fall in love, or himself for being the one to fall in love, or at his friends in general for not picking up that something was wrong (even though they’d asked countless times and he’d pushed them away) - but he knew he felt it. He felt it in the way that he’d started grinding his teeth, in the way that his shoulders and jaw were always painfully tense, and the way that every little mistake he made while coding or filming was enough for him to snap. He shouted a lot (and he apologised for it a lot, too).

“Dream?” 

Sapnap’s voice pierced his train of thought. George had gone to get food, it was just the two of them on call while he was muted for the time being.

“What’s up?”

“Is everything alright?” He sounded worried. Dream didn’t  _ want  _ him to be worried. Sapnap worrying over him only made his chest feel tighter and only made his breathing harder. Guilt surged inside him. All he had to do was tell George and maybe,  _ maybe,  _ George would love him back. Maybe he just needed to speak the three words that had come so easily to him before and it would be  _ okay.  _ He wouldn’t be ill, wouldn’t be dying, and didn’t have to shoulder that burden alone. He wouldn’t have to worry his friends.

“Yeah.” Dream put as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could. “I’m fine. I guess I haven’t been sleeping enough.” It was true. Coughing up what felt like an entire garden worth of camellia’s was enough to keep  _ anyone  _ awake at night.

“George and I can drop out of the call earlier if we’re keeping you up, you need to be getting more sleep if you’re this grouchy when you don’t.”

“I am  _ not  _ grouchy!” Dream complained, and he heard Sapnap chuckle. Good. He was laughing. The lie worked, it bought him more time. 

“Sure you aren’t.”   
  


That night, after George and Sapnap left the call early as they promised him, Dream lay awake with Patches curled up at his side. She used to sleep on his stomach but it was as if she could tell that something was wrong, as if she knew that weight on his torso would only make breathing even more difficult.

She was the best cat he could ask for. 

He thought about what had crossed his mind earlier: he could  _ tell George.  _ He could tell him the truth and hope that it fixed everything. It was worth a shot, right? It was the only chance he had of living, right? If he didn’t tell George he was as good as dead, it was only a matter of time until the flowers in his lungs grew too large to be expelled and choked him from the inside. 

His mind quickly left that thought. Instead, he wondered if they would lay camellia’s on his coffin at his funeral. He wondered if they would be told the cause of death - wondered if his family would even find him soon enough for his body to be in a good enough condition for a post-mortem that would confirm that presence of flowers - or if they would be fed another lie. He wondered, if they were told the truth, if they’d be angry at him for not telling them. If maybe they’d done something different during their last few days, weeks, or months together. Dream had no idea how long Hanahaki took to progress once it had reached the point of coughing. 

Really, he could see a doctor and have all of his questions answered, but unless he told George about how he felt then none of it mattered. 

He got out of bed - careful not to wake Patches - and wrote a note. Whoever found him, whenever they found him, he wanted his last wishes to be written down somewhere so they could be followed easily. They weren’t particularly complicated wishes, it would take more effort to break them than it would to follow them.

_ Please don’t tell my friends. I don’t want them to have to mourn me any more than you do.  _

It was never part of the plan to fall in love with his best friend when he’d met George all those years ago, and it had never been part of the plan to make his friends lose him while they were so young. He couldn’t undo the falling in love, but he could keep them from discovering what happened and keep them from their grief. Maybe they would spend the rest of their lives asking questions with no answers given, but at least they’d never have to cry at his gravestone and wonder  _ what if.  _

With his note written, Dream went back to bed. He found that for once, sleep found him easily. He supposed knowing that things were in order if he passed away overnight made it just a little bit easier.

But he didn’t. He lived to see another day, and another, and another after that. Breathing was becoming harder, coughing was becoming more commonplace, and his voice had almost permanently left him. He’d taken to not turning on his PC and ignoring his phone, hoping that if he was the one to start pushing George, Sapnap and the others away, they’d not question it when they never heard from him again.

He’d almost thought that not speaking to George would make him fall out of love, but that never came to pass. In fact every day during which he  _ didn’t  _ hear George’s voice only seemed to make him grow fonder still of the man. He wanted nothing more than to invite him to Florida just so he could hold him close  _ once  _ before he died. He’d met Sapnap, at least they’d said  _ hello  _ in person, but George was the one he loved and he was never going to get to say any of what he wanted to. He was never going to wrap him up in his arms, fall asleep with his nose pressed against his neck and feel the older tucked against him. He would never feel the touch of his lips, his tongue, his hands. He’d never know what it was like to just  _ exist  _ in the same space as George, to know true peace and love.

Dream had accepted that. As much as it hurt him to know, he’d accepted it.

He made the mistake of checking Twitter once. Dozens of notifications and messages from his friends, messages flooding in from fans to say that they missed him and they hoped he was okay. He scrolled until he cried, and when he began to cry he began to spiral. It wasn’t the tears that caused him trouble - though they made his vision a tad too blurry to read - but the sobs. The sobs that tore from his chest, that brought up masses of not just petals, but stems. Without the ability to calm himself and cough in a way that dislodged the blockage from his throat, Dream felt the corners of his vision quickly becoming dark and hazy.

He’d accepted his death, but he’d thought it was going to come a little more easily than this. He didn’t expect that when he died it would be on the floor of his apartment, his phone dropped an arms length away from him and his hands clawing at the floor. Dream had assumed that he’d pass away painlessly in his sleep one night, not that he’d be desperately begging his throat to open up just a little more so he could take in more air. He didn’t expect to be a mess - sobbing, gasping, and shaking on the ground.

But death wasn’t elegant, or pretty, or expected. His vision went dark, and he was free of pain. Maybe he’d never told anyone the truth, but at least it was over now.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe a chapter two if people want???? (which, yes, means that dream might not be dead...)
> 
> if you need to yell at me, i advise using the comment feature down below ;D also, feel free to leave a kudos, it fuels my ego & makes the brain do the happy chemical thing!
> 
> if you want more of me you should come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/moonieiswriting) or join my [discord server](https://discord.gg/berzY3JvqN). thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed!


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